The Whispers of Wilderwood Hall (21 page)

Weezy's worked here since she got her A levels out of the way. She liked Glenmill High all right, but she's loving this job – and earning her own money – more, and is looking forward to doing a diploma course in hospitality in September.

And of course, Weezy's been a much more appropriate waitress for the new-look Cairn Café than Moira (bless her). That's because she matches the decor; the blown-up, high-definition photos on
the
walls are all of glorious Scottish redheads, with Weezy – the token
English
redhead – featuring in a prime spot by the loos.

That was Mum's design idea, of course. She's decided – as well as running the Hall as a location – to do a proper course in interior design once Wilderwood is finally finished. Though at the rate
that's
going, it'll be sometime in the next couple of decades. Not that we're in much of a hurry. Like I say, time's as strange and stretchy as a very long elastic band…

As Weezy squeezes the life out of me, Cam shouts over the tops of the heads of the tea-drinking, cake-eating walkers and tourists.

“Oi! I thought you weren't getting back till late tonight,” he yelps.

He's at the table at the back. And now two little heads peer over the top of the table: sheepdogs Bella and Joe, who've sat up, all excited because their owner is excited, which is a pretty nice state of mind to be in at all times.

“We decided to come back from London a bit early, 'cause we were homesick,” I say.

“I know who
you're
homesick for,” Weezy teases me, nodding over in Cam's direction.

She
knows me so well. With a quick kiss on the cheek just for her, I leave Weezy to get back to her waitressing and wriggle between the crowded tables to get to Cam.

“Well?” I say, beaming broadly at him.

He grins in return and pushes himself back in his chair. And there she is … curled up and fast asleep in his lap, her little legs twitching as she dreams her puppy dreams.

“Thanks for looking after her while we were away,” I say to Cam, as I come around the table and dip down so I'm nose to nose with my best present ever.

“Yeah, it's been
so
tough,” Cam jokes, pretending to wipe his brow.

Imagine … when we first came to Wilderwood, I stressed so much about the secret I thought Mum was keeping from me, and all the time it was about
this
little furry dollop of wonderfulness.

Yep, getting me a dog as soon as the Hall wasn't a death trap was what Mum and RJ were discussing in their phone calls and kitchen conversations. And when Mr Fraser told Mum that Bella was expecting a litter of pups, it was a no-brainer where we were going to find ourselves a dog.

“
Minnie!” I whisper, and her ears twitch. “Hey, baby girl … I'm back.”

She wakes up in a wibble-wobble of flying legs, licking tongue and yelping. My sweet Minnie… Of course, no one knows the
real
reason I called her that. Mum supposed it was after Minnie Mouse, and I'm more than happy to let her and everyone else believe that.

The truth is, I gave
my
Minnie the name when I first got her home, and let her explore the vast wonderland of Wilderwood. In the old kitchens downstairs, she ran out of energy, and flopped down by the cooking range. It was right where I'd first seen the poor put-upon kitchen maid through the crack in the door, being scalded with hot water by a certain housemaid. The name is cute, that's all. It's not as though I've ever slipped back into that time, that place since the day of the fire.

I don't know what changed exactly. Maybe it was just me suddenly feeling like I was home, finally.

Or maybe it was because Mr Fraser got the electrician to rip out every old, dangerous wire in the place as a top priority. (“Picture the headline:
RJ Johnstone's Love Nest Inferno!
” Weezy had joked
at
the time, not realizing how close to the truth that was, in the different version of Wilderwood at least…)

Whatever the reason, something was different; there was no buzzing or hissing or vibrations prickling in my fingertips. I've never heard whispering in the walls again either, and I'm glad.

Something
else
has changed too; I don't feel the big waves of anxiety the way I used to. They're small now, same as they are for every other average person, I like to think. Or at least, I'm getting there.

“Anyway, it's not just Minnie;
I'm
glad you're back too,” says Cam, staring at me with those piercing eyes of his that always make me slightly unnerved. In a good way these days, though. “'Cause I've got something kind of insane to show you.”

“Insane?” I repeat.

“Amazing, then,” says Cam, handing me my puppy while he reaches down to grab his rucksack. “Come on, let's go…”

I'm not sure whether he's talking to me or Bella and Joe when he says that – but we all trot after him out of the café anyway.

A few seconds later, me and Cam are sitting – all three dogs at our feet – on the bench by the
bus
stop in the village high street.

“Ready?” asks Cam, reaching into his rucksack.

“I am preparing myself to be amazed,” I joke.

And what Cam takes out looks like a bit of a joke too. What he's holding up in front of me is a very tatty copy of a local church magazine, dated 1972.

I glance up at Cam with a smile-and-frown mash-up.

“No, wait, this is worth it, promise,” my best friend assures me, opening up the magazine and spreading it across our laps. The style of the mag is very home-made and old-fashioned, with tiny, dense type and no pictures on the page to brighten it up.

“So what's this about?” I ask as I try to stop Minnie biting her dad's tail, while at the same time reading a headline that says
International Disaster, Local Loss
.

“OK, so Mum came across a pile of these at the church jumble sale last Saturday. She was flicking through them, and then she saw
this
story. She said I had to show it to you.”

I peer at the page, but it's hard to concentrate when a puppy is trying to scramble up on to your lap with surprisingly sharp claws.

“
Can't you just tell me what it says, Cam?” I ask him while trying to calm Minnie.

“Sure … well, you know how you once wondered what happened to Wilderwood Hall, and why the original owners left it empty all those years ago?”

I nod. I may not have mentioned Flora to anyone, but I've spoken about the Hall plenty of times.

“According to this, Mr and Mrs Richards – and their staff – took a trip to America in 1912.”

“Did they?” I say, though of course I already know that much.

“And listen to this bit, Ellis:
Unfortunately, this voyage of a lifetime ended in tragedy
,” Cam reads from the article. “
The ship they sailed on, operated by the White Star Line company, was none other than the infamous
Titanic. How about that?”

My breath leaves me, as if I've been punched – hard – in the chest.

“
Told
you it was insane!” says Cam.

Insane? I can't make sense of this; now ice-cold waves are rippling up my spine, giving me a case of brain freeze.

And then I get it.

The
Titanic
; that ship and what happened to it is the reason Wilderwood sat deserted for so many
decades.
The Richards family, all their staff, the reason they didn't come back because they
drowned
. It's too awful. It's too heartbreakingly sad.

Unless…

“Were there any survivors from that group? Does it say?” I ask Cam, clinging to hope for the likes of Miss Matilda, the little boy, poor scalded Minnie and the others.

“One,” says Cam, peering at the tiny type. “A Mr Bill Stewart.”

Stewart. The butler! The man who ran through me to rescue Miss Matilda.

But it seems he couldn't rescue her from the
Titanic
…

“Listen, there's more; someone
else
had a lucky escape,” Cam continues. “It says here that there was a fire in the servants' quarters the week before the family left for their trip. The only person injured was the governess.”

I hold myself tight, trying hard not to shiver.

“Apparently, smoke damaged her lungs, so she had to stay home – and survived, of course.”

Relief rushes over me. I don't know what happened to Flora; whether she got found out and sacked, or stayed on as planned at Wilderwood,
only
to be sent away when the Richards never returned. Whatever her fate, I don't care. But at least Miss Matilda was spared a watery grave.

Suddenly, I just want to get home, to the Wilderwood that's in the here and now.

“Listen, I think I'd better get back and unpack,” I tell Cam, getting up from the bench, even though the dogs would rather me and Minnie stayed and played.

“OK, but before you go,” says Cam, standing up too, “I've got to tell you the best bit!”

He puts his hands on my shoulders and spins me round – and I find myself facing Honeysuckle Cottage, with its twists of peach and terracotta roses snaking all over the front of it.

“Guess who lived in this house in 1972?” Cam asks, but I can only shake my head. “Only the very,
very
old couple who were interviewed for this article. Bill and Matilda Stewart.”

Bill and Matilda
, I repeat in my head, trying to take this information in. Then I do my maths.

“The butler and governess from Wilderwood… ?” I mumble, hardly able to believe it, it's so amazing, just like Cam promised. “They got married!”

“Yep, they did. This article was written to
celebrate
their sixtieth wedding anniversary,” says Cam, looking back down at the magazine. “Here's a brilliant quote from Bill:
My Matilda felt particularly bad because one maid who wasn't supposed to go on the trip took her place. Matilda felt to blame for that poor lass's death. Well, that made me propose straight away. All that loss at sea – of the young maid and all the others of Wilderwood that we knew – it made me think we shouldn't waste a minute of our time together on this earth.
”

More shivers ripple up my spine.

The maid who died; it was Flora. The tight grip in the pit of my stomach tells me it's true.

“A happy ending, eh?” Cam says with a grin, enjoying the deliciousness of the story.

“A happy ending,” I murmur, my head bursting with truths I can't share with my friend.

And here's one in particular: they do say good things can come from bad. Flora could've killed Miss Matilda in that fire, but in the end, by accident, she gave Miss Matilda her life – and true love…

Me and Minnie have come home via the shortcut through the field, since it's quicker, but anyway, the new gates and the intercom are such a faff.
Cam
likes them; or at least he likes looking at the video monitor whenever he comes here, and frightening visitors by growling at them through the speaker. Cam also likes the idea of the new studio in the stable block. Work still hasn't started on that yet, but Cam's made RJ promise he can be the tea boy for every future visiting band.

And now we're near the East Wing, I can hear music. It's the strum of a guitar, coming from the front of the building, from the terrace.

Minnie
hears it too and darts towards the sound, pulling the lead right out of my hand.

I laugh and let her go, watching as she runs past the fountain that's now free of ivy. Mum started attacking it before we went to London, managing to pull away practically a century's worth of intertwined vines with a surprising amount of strength for someone so small and delicate. Today she's starting on the hard part, though, shovelling earth out of the basin section. She's determined to renovate the fountain and get it gushing water before the summer's over. Though there's no sign of Mum right now…

Except here she is, I see, as I round the corner of the building. She's taking a break, lounging on a deckchair next to RJ, wearing her gardening outfit of denim cut-offs, T-shirt and pink bandana.

Minnie's already found her, tail and bottom waggling madly as Mum rubs her ears.

“Hello!” says RJ, glancing up at me without pausing in his strumming. “How are you doing, Miss Johnstone?”

I smile at that. I
love
it that we went to court and that I'm now properly, officially a Johnstone – same as Mum, and RJ and Weezy. It makes me feel like
I'm
part of a tribe, and that I'll never be the odd one out again. Same as it's kind of cool walking around with RJ and Weezy and being the smallest for once, by a few centimetres anyway.

“Yeah, I'm OK. It was good to catch up with Weezy and Cam. And get Minnie back, of course,” I reply, my fingers tight around the magazine Cam gave me to keep. “By the way, that's sounding good. Got a title for it yet?”